Alfred Street Baptist Church Backline Support

Backline Support for Outdoor Baptist Church Event

RCI Systems had the opportunity on Sunday August 14th to provide audio and backline support for the Alfred Street

Baptist Church at their Faith and Family event in the Gotham Arena at Six Flags America.

About 3,000 participated in the high heat and humidity to make this event a success. The two-part event started with sound checks at 8:30am. The doors opened at 9:45am for the Worship Arts Showcase at 10:30am featuring the award-winning 80 voice ASBC choir and liturgical dancers, with special performances by The Rodney Giles Group (pictured above).
At 11am Pastor Howard-John Wesley celebrated the Hour of Power Worship Service.

RCI tackled the acoustics of the sheet metal arena and the restriction of only four 20A electrical services with the efficient EAW KF730/SB730 line array speaker system running on QSC Powerlight amplifiers. A four-mix monitor system with 11 wedges, along with a four piece live band completely used up the power available.

Due to logistic challenges, both the audience and monitor mixes were done on a Yamaha Digital Mixer from the side of the stage using a wireless iPad with Yamaha StageMix remote software. Needing rock-solid RF, we chose Shure UHF-R wireless mics with SM58 capsules to handle the high SPL of the gospel vocals. Special overhead orchestra booms with counterbalance were used to properly mic the 3rd and 4th rows of the single-level choir set-up. All of the backline support provided performed to expectations in an outside site in summer weather.

Hydration was the key as the temperature in the Arena rose to over 100° in the mid-day sun, but the celebrants and the audience both seemed take it in stride before leaving the Arena to spend the afternoon in the Oakgrove Pavilion.